


This Time Tomorrow

by itsallaboutzarry



Category: One Direction (Band), zayn malik - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, Before Sunrise AU, Ferris Wheels, I've been to Vienna once so excuse any and all inaccuracies, Lost Zayn, M/M, Patrick the plant, Pianist Harry, Strangers to Lovers, Vienna, a lot of talking through feelings, brief mention of past relationship, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-18 18:47:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14219454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsallaboutzarry/pseuds/itsallaboutzarry
Summary: “Twenty-four hours.”“With me.”“A once in a life opportunity, huh?’Zayn smiles back. “Less than. Think of it like this. In twenty, thirty years, when you’re married and have three kids, you won’t have to wonder what it would be like if that guy from the train to Vienna asked you to spend a day with him.”A Before Sunrise AU





	This Time Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueruin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueruin/gifts).



> Title is from Trent Dabbs’ song of the same name.  
> A big big thank you to blueruin for your prompts, I can't tell you how much fun I ended up having writing this. I hope you like what I've done with it, since only a few bits were taken from the movie. Thank you to the mods for this exchange, there wouldn't be any fic to read without you and we're all incredibly grateful for what you do. And of course, to my beta, for always reading everything I send you, and just generally being the best.

 

It’s quiet. All the way from Paris to Vienna it’s completely quiet, or at least that’s what it feels like now that it’s not anymore, like the couple sitting at the other end of the coach have burst a bubble of serenity and peacefulness with pins and needles of their harsh voices. The fact they’re talking in German doesn’t help, and neither do the lush pastures stretching by just outside the window. Zayn’s been picturing he was lying in the middle of one, dandelions and daisies around his head, sunshine in his eyes, distracting and warm; now he’s suddenly plummeting back into his seat. The couple might be sat as far away from Zayn as they could be in the coach, but still they’re loud enough for him to hear their every word.

“ _ Kannst Du sie bald auswendig _ ?” The Woman says, with her eyebrow raised and her arms crossed over her chest. Zayn doesn’t understand a word they’re saying, but he understands her body language. She definitely isn’t happy.

The man says something complicated back, chuckles a little too dryly for her liking and Zayn’s as well. He can’t see him though, Zayn’s turned towards her. He wishes they’d carry subtitles with them – if he has to be a part of their conversation, he should at least be able to understand it. 

They keep going back and forth, biting words or maybe it just sounds like that, all foreign and loud. Then the woman slaps her palm against the table and she looks angry more than she does not-happy. She doesn’t look anything except for properly pissed off. So biting words it is.

The way Zayn and Brent fought barely twelve hours ago was quiet. Instead of heatedly screaming in each other’s faces, Brent barely looked at Zayn the entire day yesterday. They sat on the couch in front of the TV while all of Brent’s friends kept calling him, asking where he is, why he isn’t going out, where this boyfriend of his was. Zayn was right there, sitting next to him, but not close enough to touch, with his arms crossed, trying not to overanalyze the way Brent huffed out, “We’re not feeling like going out anymore,” into the phone.

They always fought like the german couple is - loud, mean, they never cared who overheard them. That’s how it always was in New York. If it were them, one would already be pushing the other away. Zayn always liked kicking at Brent’s shin in the middle of a fight to hear him yelp. He used to like the sound in the middle of the frenzy.

Their last fight was like water coming to a boil on a stove. First cold, just resentment for not coming to Paris sooner. “I thought you were gonna come in March,” Brent said after they’d eaten their lunch in silence. “I didn’t think it would take you this long.” It was quiet too, the way Brent said it, and Zayn wondered if they weren’t worth raising their voices over anymore.

Zayn thought Brent was saying something else, something wedged between his words that he didn’t like the sound of. He didn’t say anything back though, just shrugged and put their dishes in the sink. They were still planning on going out later and Zayn didn’t want to make a thing out of it. He didn’t want to make it into a fight, because  _ he was in Paris _ . He came to prove to Brent and himself and his mom, that he didn’t always just give up when things didn’t go his way. Zayn could work for it, could fight for the things that mattered. 

Half an hour into a French reality show they were watching that Zayn couldn’t follow because he doesn’t know a word of French - and Brent knew this, Brent said, calm and clear, not even trying to keep his voice soft to ease the blow, “This isn’t working, is it? You don’t think it is, do you?” It was a very Brent thing to do in the end, to say something like that as a question, so that the weight of it fell on Zayn. Zayn was supposed to decide if it wasn’t working. He was going to be the one that was going to break them up. Not Brent, never Brent, not even when he moved to Paris without Zayn. Without so much as asking if Zayn wanted to go with him, because he thought Zayn wouldn’t want to leave his jobs and friends and family behind. He wouldn’t, Brent was right, but he didn’t even ask.

While he packed his bag back up, stuffing the t-shirt and jeans into his backpack and taking his toothbrush from the bathroom, Zayn didn’t tell Brent he could’ve just told him this over the phone, because even if his eyes hurt from rolling them so hard, Zayn didn’t actually want to fight with Brent anymore.

Zayn’s watching the woman shake her head at who he thinks is her boyfriend. She scoffs at him and he finally puts his newspaper down. They’re passionate about whatever they’re fighting over, and though Zayn can find it in himself to appreciate it, rooting for the woman to win in the end, he’d rather not be reminded about all the things he’d done wrong with Brent and how, if he got to do it all over again, he doesn’t think he’d try any harder.

Zayn snorts when the guy sitting in the seats before them huffs and smacks his book over his face. They’re going at it, actually screaming on the train that isn’t stopping anytime soon. It’s going to be an even longer trip if Zayn’s supposed to sit there and listen to them going at it. The past eight hours have been so uneventful and boring that Zayn aches for it, for resting his head against the window and falling restlessly back to some semblance of sleep. When the guy drops the book down into his lap, he looks at Zayn with the kind of exasperation Zayn feels deep in his chest, so he offers him a smile. The guy returns it a little, along with a pretty frown, and a then a look down at his book that probably means Zayn should stop staring. It’s alright, he only has to move his eyes two inches to the left to try and keep up with the fight again.

Now the woman’s waving her arms around and the man is shaking his head with something like disappointment – if Zayn saw his face, he’d know. It’s when the woman stands so she can stomp her foot on the floor that the guy with the pretty frown and big eyes and book stands up too and turns to them. Zayn really hopes he’s giving them both a look that tells them they need to shut up soon.

Zayn has a book of his own that he hasn’t been able to pay attention to. Though, less because of the noise and more because he’s never felt the need nor the want to read Bukowski, but as he’s stolen it right from Brent’s bookshelf out of spite and bitterness, he’s going to read it if it kills him.  _ ‘You never do anything all the way, Zayn. Can’t fucking commit to a single thing.’  _ This’ll show him.

When he looks up from the page he’s had opened since at least the last twelve pastures, the guy with the wide eyes and long legs is walking towards him and after a moment of panic that gets Zayn’s heart racing, settles down into the seat over the aisle from Zayn’s, which, of course. Zayn rolls his eyes at himself.

As soon as the guy drops his bag down on the floor between his feet, the woman at the other end is pushing the coach’s door open and the man is following after her, both leaving behind a pleasant and suddenly eerie silence. There’s the  _ clunk clunk _ of the train and the air catching in the open windows, but no one’s chattering, it’s like no one dares disturb it now that they have it again.

Zayn leans his head back against his seat and looks over at the guy with curly hair that he has pushed back with a pair of sunglasses. 

The guy asks, “Do you know why cannibals don’t eat clowns?” leaning a little over the aisle. Zayn frowns and tries not to stare at how his eyes are practically gleaming with the joke. He looks like he’s barely holding back from laughing, even biting his lip. And then he’s nearly falling out his seat when he rushes to say, “Shit, do you speak English? Mm…” Zayn doesn’t know how he’d ask that any other way, and definitely not in any other language. He took Italian in high school, but besides, ‘ciao, mi chiamo Zayn,’ he doesn’t remember much else. Going for Italian instead of English in Austria might be too optimistic though. 

He’s pursing his lips and sounding out something that sounds frighteningly French, so Zayn cuts him off with a “Yeah.” The guy blushes and Zayn thinks he’s lovely. Really lovely. His cheeks are dimpled. “Yeah, I do, sorry. Why don’t cannibals eat clowns?” Zayn’s heard the joke before, but he wants to indulge him. Maybe see his eyes sparkle again.

Chuckling, the guy says, “Because they taste funny,” and starts laughing before he’s even finished the punchline. And well, the joke isn’t all that funny, but in the face of dimples and a high pitched laugh that doesn’t sound like it could be coming from a guy with delightfully pink lips, Zayn laughs with the cute stranger. 

“You looked like you needed a good joke,” he says with an accent, his words dragged out slowly in a low tone of voice. The guy looks and sounds like a lot of Zayn’s wet dreams. 

“They’re not so bad.” Zayn points his chin towards the door of the coach. “A good distraction though.”

“From what?” Harry asks, his face all gentle shapes of wide eyes and pink lips. He’s ernest, sort of innocent. Something in between. Zayn can’t stop staring.

“I, er,” Zayn realizes this is something his mom has warned him against -  _ don’t talk to strangers  _ \- but he guesses it can’t do much harm. They are on the train in what is practically the middle of nowhere for Zayn, and after the train stops at his station, he guesses he doesn’t have to talk to the stranger again. Maybe this is a kind of loophole to that rule, so he says, “I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday,” in a rush of thinking that it’s only good to put it out there. Even if Zayn thought he’d be more broken up about it too. He doesn’t feel like it though. That’s probably something he should be paying attention to.

The guy coos. He actually coos right at Zayn and looks a little like he’s about to pat Zayn’s head with a  _ there, there _ . Before he can do any of that though, he offers Zayn his hand and a chirpy, “I’m Harry, by the way.”

“Zayn,” he shakes his hand. “And I don’t need like, sympathy, or whatever.” He doesn’t think he could handle a  _ there, there. _

“I’m just,” Harry shrugs and gives him another bright smile, “Here. To talk. If you want.”

“Not sure if I want to talk about it.”

“Too soon?” It’s close enough to a coo again that Zayn shakes his head with a stern, “No. Just not a big deal in the end. It was… I was expecting it.” Zayn wasn’t though. He thought the trip would be great, that Brent would see it as Zayn finally stepping up and giving a solid effort to be a good boyfriend. He came all the way to  _ Paris _ for fuck’s sake. Zayn’s never done that for someone before. It took him four months just to save up for a plane ticket. So much for not coming in March.

“So you’re not all broken hearted over it? Don’t want to eat a lot of ice cream and have a good cry?”

“A good… No. No, I think I’m gonna be fine.”

Harry tsks. “I think someone isn’t facing his feelings.” He leans his head sideways, glasses nearly slipping off his head. “Am I right?”

“What are you? A love guru or something?”

“Nah, I’m just in touch with my emotions,” Harry pats at his chest. “It’s good, you know? Makes you feel grounded in life.”

“I’m in touch with my emotions.” Zayn doesn’t know why, but he thinks he should be offended, so he is a little bit. “There’s just, nothing in particular about this break up that I’d need to be in touch with.”

“So why  _ did  _ you break up?”

That endearing earnestness isn’t all that endearing anymore. But Zayn still finds himself sighing to himself and at Harry and at Brent as well, whatever he’s doing now - probably telling his friends something similar as to what Zayn’s telling Harry. “We were together for almost a year before he, Brent, moved to Paris for work. And then,” he shrugs because he feels like he has to, “the distance and the fact I was supposed to go see him in March, but couldn’t swing for an international ticket just like that. It kind of piled up.”

“Did you love him?” Harry sighs out. More than a love guru, he sounds like a hopeless romantic.

“I guess I did. Before. Maybe.” It doesn’t matter now, Zayn knows that much. Now he’s on the train to Vienna, so he can get on the flight back to New York. That’s what matters now. He says as much.

“I guess that’s fair. Was he the one to break up with you?”

“It was mutual.” Or at least Zayn thinks it was. Neither of them said it out loud either way. After Brent asked if Zayn thought it was working, that was kind of it. Zayn didn’t feel like making it work anymore.

“Well, in my professional opinion,” Harry gives him a bright grin, “You’re going to be perfectly okay.” Zayn frowns and nearly says of course, he’s going to be perfectly perfect, but then Harry cuts him off with, “You should say it. Out loud. Say you’re going to be okay.”

“What?”

“Come on, it’s going to make you feel better.”

“But I -”

“Just say it. Come on.”

“Fine,” Zayn grunts. This is stupid and ridiculous, but he can’t seem to actually say no to Harry, so he says, “I’m going to be okay,” instead and revels in the bright look on Harry’s face. He’s not sure why, but it feels a little bit like an accomplishment. To divert their conversation as far away as he possibly can from how okay he is, Zayn asks, “What are you reading anyway?”

“Ah.” His eyes flash with something and then Harry’s waving his book around. “I was just getting to the good part of it too when they decided to have a row right here.” He shows Zayn the cover and oh,  _ oh _ .  _ Dick Hyman’s Solo Piano Sketches of the Great Standards. _ It’s definitely not a stolen Bukowski, which Zayn shyly lifts up for half a second, because it’s not even his book. He isn’t reading it anyway. Zayn’s never going to finish it, but Brent doesn’t need to know that.

“Good part?” he asks doubtfully and dumps his softcover on the seat next to him.

“I’m underselling it, aren’t I?” Harry grins and as it goes a little sideways, Zayn sees a dimple again. “It’s all good. Amazing, actually.”

“I’d love to borrow it sometime then, if it’s so amazing.”

“You play?” Harry asks excitedly, inching forward in his seat and Zayn feels like he’s letting him down by shaking his head.

“Nah, I’m a bit tone death actually.” Just as Harry’s about to open his mouth, there are voices carrying through the closed and then open door, familiar, loud, German voices that, even if now quieter, are still harsh, so Zayn interrupts him with a quick and desperate, “Do you want to go to the lounge with me? Have a coffee or something?”

===

“So are you from Paris?”

“Do I sound like I’m from Paris?” Harry asks, in the middle of blowing over the steaming cup and tearing open a sugar packet. As Zayn inexplicably expected, he rips it and the sugar goes everywhere. “Oops.”

“You look like you’re the clumsiest person I’ve ever met.”

“Hey,” he drawls out, voice thick as honey and sounding just as sweet too. Endearing. Zayn’s never been so endeared by a person he’s just met.

“It’s not a bad thing. It’s…”  _ Cute _ , Zayn wants to say, but he doesn’t really need to, because Harry’s ducking his head down and blushing again. Zayn is painfully endeared. “Where are you from though? Here?”

“Technically, no,” Harry is shaking his head while he carefully, with his tongue out, rips the corner of another packet and gets all of it inside his cup this time. “From Manchester. In England.”

“Right, the one in England, okay.”

“Stop making fun of me.” But Harry’s laughing, so Zayn doesn’t think he’s actually bothered by it. Zayn’ll do his best to stop, but he isn’t making any promises.

“I’m not, I promise. So,” he takes a sip of his own coffee. “How come you’re here?”

“Here?” Harry looks out the window and points at it. Then he points down at his lap and asks, “Or here?”

“Both?”

“Well, hopefully I’m on the train to Vienna and didn’t muck that up again. And I just- I went back home for a visit.”

“Which is in Manchester.” Zayn nods, smiling at Harry as Harry smiles at him.

“How come  _ you’re _ here?”

“Not going to ask me where I’m from first?”

Managing to pull off a graceful shrug and wave of his hand, Harry scoffs, “America.”

“Yeah? You sure it’s not Canada?”

“Well…”

“New York, born and raised,” he cuts Harry off before he can talk himself into a circle. Harry looks like the type to do that, talk and talk and talk without really saying anything in particular. It’s lucky Zayn’s the type to enable it, because he likes to listen and listen and listen. As long as he doesn’t have to say much himself and no one holds it against him when he eventually falls asleep.

Harry squints, says, “And now you’re here,” slowly, measuring his words.

“I am.”

“And that’s because…”

“Because I have a flight out of Vienna tomorrow at nine in the morning.” Or at least Zayn thinks it’s nine and not eight. He guesses he’ll find out when he gets there.

“But,” Harry starts, frowning at him again, except this time it’s genuinely confused. “You’re just getting here from Paris.”

Zayn nods slowly, watching as the wheels in Harry’s head turn. “I am.”

“Because you didn’t get a flight out of Paris. You’re flying out of Vienna instead. And you had to get to Vienna from Paris by train.”

“I didn’t. I did, and, yeah.”

“Okay,” he shrugs quickly and smiles again, takes a sip and looks at Zayn expectantly.

He’s endearing and maybe even a little fascinating. If Zayn was here for longer, he’d try to figure Harry out, see how long he could hold his attention. Zayn’s been told he has a short span, that he isn’t good at the long term of things. He’s never really stuck around long enough to find out if it’s true or not. “What do you do? Here. Or in Vienna.”

“Got into university here. Hence the book.”

“The textbook,” Zayn nods. “So you study… Piano?”

Harry’s eyes  _ actually _ sparkle, Zayn swears it, and his curls jump in front of his eye as soon as he takes the glasses off his head, playing with the plastic between his fingers. “Yeah, yeah, I do. And composition. It’s really great here, they have the best program.”

“They do?”

“Mhm, important, like. It wasn’t easy to get in and all that.”

“Then you must be really good, huh?” Zayn’s new favorite things include making Harry smile and blush. Those are his top two as of right now. They’ll probably be something completely different tomorrow at this time, but for right now, those are at the top.

“I’ve been told I’m not bad, yeah.” Ducking his head down, so Zayn can’t appreciate the tinge on his cheeks, Harry coughs into his fist and pulls on his hair before he straightens back up. “What about you though? The Paris and Vienna and trains and planes.”

“And automobiles,” Zayn finishes because he thinks Harry is leading up to another joke, but he doesn’t get a laugh for it. “Um,” he clears his throat too. “I’ve been in Paris for a couple of days, like, actually for two? But since I had to leave sooner than I thought I would be, I got the first plane ticket back home.”

“Out of Vienna,” Harry says again, doubtfully this time. Zayn’s close to thinking that what he’s doing is as insane as it sounded last night. It probably has something to do with the nine hour train ride, but besides the German couple, it hasn’t been all that bad. There’s been decent food, a plug for his charger right next to his seat and a toilet that flushes. That’s more than Zayn would ever need on a train.

“Out of Vienna.”

“Why not Paris?” Harry finally asks.

It’s complicated though. “Could be I wanted to see the sights of Europe.”

“Could be,” Harry agrees easily, but narrows his eyes at him and doesn’t take it as an answer he wants. Which is the only answer Zayn thought he had to offer for right now, but maybe it isn’t.

“Or,” Zayn goes on. He feels this need to not let the silence linger too long around Harry, that he can’t just watch the pastures keep on going by the window with him sitting right here. Zayn feels like he should be watching Harry instead of the pastures. “I wanted to sit on a train for nine hours and just think.”

“Think?” Harry leans back into his seat and allows Zayn to continue. Zayn wonders how long his attention span is, if he can pay attention for longer than it takes to blink.

“Yeah, you know. Just thinking about this or that,” or everything but this or that, “like, I have this idea, right? It’s… Want to hear about it?”

Harry shrugs easily, taking a sip. “Sure.”

“Okay. It’s um, for like, a TV show, but more like a documentary, I guess, for this program that would be on every day, for twenty-four hours for a year straight.”

“Wow.”

“Right,” Zayn agrees and feels his body move forward. “So, every day would be a different person, three hundred and sixty-five of them, each one in a different country until we run out and have to start over again, but– That doesn’t matter, whatever.” He shakes his head, because that’s the kink he can’t quite work out. “It’d be life captured as it’s lived.” That’s the tagline of it at least. “Like, it would start with a guy waking up when his alarm rings, right? He’d shower, eat his breakfast slowly, pack up his notebooks and probably forget one, and then run to college where he’d play piano all day, and there’d be a camera right there for twenty-four hours, capturing it all.”

Harry offers him a smile, this thing that’s tucked into his cheek. “I can’t really play piano all day long though,” he says. “My fingers get cramps when I do.”

“Who says I was talking about you?”

“Hmm, guess you’re right. Could be anyone.”

“Could be,” Zayn shrugs and they smile at each other again. “Anyway, that’s the idea.”

“So, it’d just be this mundane thing? That everyone already does every day of their lives?”

“I mean.” Zayn tries to keep his shoulders in a straight line, but they curl into him all by themselves. “Yeah, basically, but it would be special, you know? For being so mundane.”

Harry gives him a laugh. “And there would be three hundred days of this?”

“Three hundred and sixty-five.”

“But wouldn’t it get boring? After like a couple of days?”

“No, no,” Zayn says with a firm shake of his head, because it wouldn’t. He’d want to watch all of it. Every single day, every single person. Brent had his reservations too when Zayn told him about it. “I don’t know, I can’t explain it without sounding like a pretentious asshole, but I think it’d be sort of beautiful. Just, yeah. A little bit beautiful.”

“Okay, so, it would basically be what, twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes of boring everyday stuff that we all do,” Harry says and then actually wiggles his eyebrows, “with maybe a bonus of a four minute sex scene that you kind of cringe at and pretend to not feel sorry for the guy after?”

Zayn blushes this time. “I mean… in a nutshell.”

“See, I think that would be the most popular episode.”

“Oh yeah,” Zayn chuckles and watches the sun pass over Harry’s face as the train moves. “The pianist that falls asleep halfway during sex, because he’s so tired after playing all day long.”

“As long as he gets to finish before he does, I think I’d be happy for him,” Harry smirks and Zayn smirks right back at him.

“The happiest, I bet.”

“Mmm.”

===

Zayn is standing up, looking at the line of people two steps in front of him all shuffling in a neat row towards the open doors. They all have bags over their shoulders like Zayn does, pulling suitcases behind their feet and all ready to get off and go wherever they need to go, but he doesn’t think he’s ready to leave just yet. There’s something about Harry, who’s still sitting down because he’s in no rush - not that Zayn is - that’s making Zayn stare at him like he’s trying to see something that isn’t there. It feels like if Zayn just looks long enough, hard enough, that he’ll see it.

“Okay, hear me out,” he starts to get Harry’s attention, who’s smiling, no, grinning up at him, because Zayn has always been transparent. “This is like a once in a lifetime chance we have here.” It is, less than one in a million. This doesn’t just happen. 

“Oh?”

“I want to keep talking to you and I think, or I hope, you want to keep talking to me too,” Zayn pitches his voice up, but doesn’t make it a question, because he’d rather not get an answer if he can help it. When Harry moves his head from side to side, like he’s weighing it over, Zayn keeps going. “I like you. We have this,” he motions between them, “connection, right? It’s not just me that’s like... I’m not going crazy here, am I?”

Harry bites his lip and shakes his head quickly. Zayn is pretty sure he’s actually gone for him already. 

“Okay, exactly. So, what do you say?”

Frowning now, which definitely doesn’t make Zayn’s stomach flutter like his little smile did, Harry asks, “To what?”

“To me.” There’s a moment where Zayn wants to spread his arms wide and do a little jiggle, but he’s not past the point of being embarrassed in front of someone he likes so much, even if he rarely shows it anymore. “I have to stay in Vienna for,” he checks his watch, “the next twenty-three or four hours. We could make, like, a prototype of my TV show thing.”

As a blush starts crawling up his neck, because Zayn hasn’t been this awkward in years, he watches Harry sway his head again, left and right, before he nods and grins. And there’s the dimple. 

“Twenty-four hours.”

“With me.”

“A once in a life opportunity, huh?’

Zayn smiles back. “Less than. Think of it like this. In twenty, thirty years, when you’re married and have three kids, you won’t have to wonder what it would be like if that guy from the train to Vienna asked you to spend a day with him.”

“Hmm, that is tempting.”

Zayn offers Harry his hand. “Now I’m not going to be the one that got away, right?”

“Well, when you put it like that.” Harry takes his hand, and though they have to shuffle after the line of people that’s barely moved in this time, they make it off the train, out of the station and into the morning sunshine. Zayn inhales and wonders how much the air here is different than the one in New York. 

===

“So.” 

“Yeah.”

They’ve gotten as far as waiting at the light and crossing the street, and though Zayn didn’t expect them to go running all over Vienna, hand in hand, laughing and falling in love - because that would be  _ absolutely ridiculous _ \- he wasn’t expecting it to be  _ this  _ awkward. But it’s not like they didn’t just spend a significant amount of time talking already - in all honesty, more than Zayn and Brent ever did, so that can’t have been all Zayn’s fault either - so they should be able to pick up where they left off while wandering the streets until Zayn’s flight. It seems there’s more to it than that. He can feel Harry’s nervousness for one, biting his lip and then his second knuckle, and the silence that Zayn wants to turn is burrowing between them at an unsettling pace.

“Should we -”

“Do you want to -”

“You first,” Harry says before Zayn can do the same. 

“Okay,” he smiles as softly as he can at him and hikes his backpack higher on his shoulders. They can do this, they can totally handle this. “Do you want to walk around a bit? Since I’ve never been here before.”

“Oh.” Harry’s eyes go all wide and happy, Zayn swears. And it’s not just because of the sunshine. “So I can be your tour guide for the day?” he asks with his eyebrows raised up in what Zayn decides is a happy arch too.

“Wouldn’t expect any less.”

“Great,” Harry yips and claps his hands. He has long fingers, though Zayn tries not to notice. “What do you wanna see first?”

“Um. I don’t- I don’t know?”

“Right, right,” Harry smacks himself on the forehead and there goes the fluttering in Zayn’s stomach again. Then Harry bites his lip around a smile, which doesn’t help either. He talks so slow, but it seems like he goes through five emotions during a span of two seconds. “Let’s just,” Harry points ahead of them, down a long stretch of a straight street. It looks just like New York. Maybe with a bit more grass and a few more trees between the buildings, but the gist is the same. It feels familiar, the throb of people rushing past them, the traffic lights and cars, though the absence of honking is a welcome change.

“How about this.” It strikes Zayn that although they  _ have  _ talked, they’re complete strangers. And after these twenty-three or four hours, they still will be, really. Sure, Zayn wants to kiss Harry and know why he plays piano, why not the violin or the harp, why not just stay in Manchester to do it all there, why Vienna. But tomorrow at this time, a little over nine in the morning, Zayn will he pocketing his passport and flying away like he promised he would. That doesn’t give them a lot of time, but maybe they’ll have just enough to cover at least half of those things. Zayn reminds himself that leaving would be keeping the promise he made to Brent to stay off this continent for the foreseeable future, in not so many or kind words. It’s Vienna for a day and then back to New York. “Since I don’t know anything about you, or not really, and you don’t know me-”

“Please don’t tell me you’re a serial killer, Zayn. I’m actually looking forward to this and it would really ruin the whole thing,” Harry whines, petulantly, and sort of looks enough like he means it, that if Zayn  _ was _ a serial killer, he’d pretend to lock his lips and throw away the key just to appease him.

As it is, “I’m not, I promise. But, we can play a game, like, twenty questions or something, and you’ll get to find out for yourself.”

“Twenty questions? Are we twelve?” Harry laughs.

“Hey,” Zayn tries his best to scowl, but he doesn’t think he manages. “I’m serious, come on. It’s the fastest way to get to know someone.”

“Well, I guess, possibly, that it’s not the  _ worst _ idea.” Harry shakes with a laugh. Usually, the sight of someone almost bent over at their half, gasping for air, would make Zayn chuckle along with them. Now that Harry does it, he just wants to hug him. Which is new. And interesting.

“Question one,” Zayn announces. “Do you always laugh like that?”

Gasping, Harry slaps a hand over his mouth. “Like what?” he mumbles around it.

“Sounds kind of like a honk,” Zayn starts, teasingly slow. He bumps their shoulders together when Harry ducks his head though. “It’s cute.”

“It’s  _ not _ .”

“Really is.”

“My turn,” Harry tries to dust himself off, when really, he’s only wearing a white t-shirt and black skinny jeans that Zayn is decidedly not looking down at. Or the way they cling to his thighs. He’s focusing more on the leather bag slung over his side instead, it’s more polite, Zayn’s sure. “Why did you  _ really _ take the train from Paris?”

Looking at him from the corner of his eye, Zayn wonders if he should be honest or not, but since they're strangers and all. “Full disclosure?”

“Sure,” Harry says it like he’s thinking the same thing. They have nothing to lose.

It’s because of Harry’s easy smile more than anything else that Zayn says, “I felt like I wanted to run away, but I didn’t want to go back home yet.” It wasn’t Zayn’s best moment. Though he deserves some credit for doing exactly what Brent told him to, he could’ve waited the half an hour for the plane too. It would’ve saved him some of the money he doesn’t have and the nine hours he spent sleeping, looking out the window and then talking to Harry. Zayn can’t find it in himself to regret it though.

“That bad, huh?” Harry asks carefully, because he’s considering the fact that Zayn’s going through a break-up, still in the present more than the past tense, not even half a day ago since it happened. And although Zayn appreciates it, there’s nothing to be careful about. Brent was great, he still is, or he knows how to be, and while Zayn might have liked him once, he doesn’t feel anything in particular for him now. Probably for a while. The break-up was inevitable, it’s just bad luck it happened when he was visiting him. Or maybe it wasn’t.

“Not really,” Zayn shrugs as casually as he can. “It wasn’t really good to begin with? Or it wasn’t bad, but the breakup was good? One of those.”

“How can a breakup be good?”

“It’s good when you want it to happen. It was inevitable,” he says out loud just to make sure it’s the truth.

“He wasn’t the love of your life then?” Harry asks easily now, because he doesn’t know that Zayn’s never thought about that before, and that he doesn’t really want to think about it now either.

Zayn’s tempted to answer because of the carefully questioning crook of Harry’s eyebrow, but he says, “You’re using up all your questions for my ex? Really?” instead, because it’s more fun that way. He gets to deflect and make Harry sputter at the same time.

“No, wait, that’s not how the game’s played.”

“Of course it is,” Zayn turns around to face Harry now that he’s stopped. Zayn keeps walking backwards. “I think you have…” he taps his chin and grins, “Oh, about seventeen left.”

He watches Harry go from a frown to a smile and then a smirk. When he catches up, Zayn turns back around. “Fine. Your turn.”

Zayn wanted to ask something ridiculous, because he thinks he might be allowed under these twenty-four hour conditions. He could probably ask Harry anything and he’d get a straight, honest answer. Zayn knows he isn’t about to lie to him - there’s nothing to gain. They’re here and tomorrow they won’t be. Zayn likes that more than he doesn’t.

“Have you ever been in love?” Before he knows it, the question is out there and they’re walking closer to the end of the street towards what looks like the tallest cathedral Zayn’s ever seen. He can’t say he feels infinitesimal walking towards it, because he suddenly feels even smaller than that.

He only manages to tear his eyes away from it because of Harry’s heavy sigh. He’s looking down at his tattered boots, suede once, now more scuffed than any particular fabric, and Zayn has the urge to tip Harry’s head up and press his hand flat against Harry’s back so he straightens, stands a little taller. Zayn’s never liked seeing the kind of emotions that make you go quiet on people. The fact that it’s his question that makes Harry inhale and exhale before answering turns something sour in Zayn’s stomach.

“I have. But not really…” Harry shrugs. “It wasn’t recent. Sort of before I moved here?”

“I’m not gonna ask.” Zayn bumps the back of his hand against Harry’s to tell him everything he doesn’t think he should right now, like that he knows what it feels like, that Zayn’s been there too and that even if he hadn’t, he likes to think he’d know what it felt like - to be in love and then to not.

“It’s fine.” Harry bumps him back and sighs a little easier this time. “He was great. I think it would be easier to get over if he was a horrible person or something, but really, he was a great.”

“Are you? Over him?” It’s a tentative question and Zayn hopes his hopefulness doesn’t show.

“I should be,” Harry laughs this easy sound that isn’t as contrite as it would be if it were coming from Zayn. He likes moving on as quick as possible, and though he doesn’t know exactly how long Harry’s been here, his relationship must’ve ended at least half a year ago. It’s June now, and that’s too long for Zayn. But that’s not why it matters. “It’s not- I’m not hung up or anything,” Harry tells him, his eyes skippings from Zayn to down the street to the cathedral and back to Zayn. “Probably more than him, I miss being in a relationship.”

“Oh, so you’re one of those,” Zayn jokes to flip the mood. 

Harry blushes prettily back at him. “I am and I’m not ashamed of it. Love a good hand to hold and I appreciate a good bouquet when someone buys me flowers for no reason. I just think,” he shrugs again, “It’s easier going through, like, life, while having someone be in your corner unconditionally, you know? That’s what I like about it.”

Zayn doesn’t have time to be taken aback by Harry’s open honesty, about which he’s getting an idea Harry throws around left and right, because he’s too busy knowing exactly what he means and wondering how long it’ll be before he’s in another relationship again, flying over oceans because he thinks he’s a fool for love when really, he can be an absolute idiot for a pretty face and a hand to hold too.

“What about you?” Harry bumps into him, but it doesn’t really look intentional. “Do you believe in love?”

“I do.” Open and honest, that should be the motto of this experience. “Not that I know what it’s like, but yeah, maybe.”

Harry’s face goes soft around the edges when he says, “It’s wonderful,” but the words sink too low in Zayn’s stomach for it to flutter. Zayn hopes it is, everyone says it is. Somehow, he’s never been in a relationship long enough to really find out for himself. Or he doesn’t think so.

“What is this place?” he asks once he knows they’re walking towards the cathedral, coming to it from the side so Zayn doesn’t see the fountain or the garden at the front until they’re right there, in front of it and its enormity. He doesn’t know if he would admit it to anyone except Harry right now, but it takes Zayn’s breath away.

“ _ Karlskirche Cathedral _ ,” Harry informs him helpfully, pronouncing the name with an accent, in what Zayn is going to guess is his tour guide voice, all proper and high. “Or just Charles Cathedral for us foreigners.”

“It’s…” Zayn lets his head hang back on his neck to look at it whole. Grand would be a good word to describe it. Or majestic, though magical doesn’t seem to be any less fitting with how he’s picturing a ball with gowns and masks when he looks at it, imagining carriages with white horses waiting in front. 

“Yeah,” Harry hums next to him. “Come on, let’s sit down.”

They get to the fountain and perch on the edge of it. Though it’s June, which means New York is already stuffier with each day that moves them closer to summer, the air here still has a freshness to it, like it’s a little cleaner, easier to breathe. It’s still early too, just breaking into the awkward time between morning and noon, so while the sun is raising, it’s spreading its warmth slowly.

“How come you came to Vienna?” Zayn asks. He has his fingers in the green water, the stone at the bottom stained yellow and old, and though he’s tempted, he doesn’t pick up the coins. “I bet there’s good schools for piano in England.”

Harry is quiet for a while, maybe wondering about how to answer, but Zayn thinks it’s because he’s weighing how honest he can be. How honest he’ll let himself be. When Harry says, “It was the furthest from home where I got accepted,” Zayn knows where the scale stands.

“Why the furthest?”

“I wanted to be by myself.” Harry squints up into the sun. “I didn’t want to stay in England and settle too soon. I wanted this adventure, right? All travel and music, and I wanted to do it in a place where no one knew who I was.”

“So Vienna.”

“Vienna,” Harry agrees with a laugh. “It’s not so bad. A bit cold during winter, but I just bundle up and,” he shrugs. “I’ve managed to meet some people here too, so I guess the whole mysterious factor got squashed pretty quick.”

“That’s good though, right? Not being completely alone.”

“Never really was before I came here. I didn’t mind it.”

Zayn hums and then says, “You don’t seem like the type to enjoy a good silence,” because Harry doesn’t. He looks like he laughs more than he doesn’t, looks like he makes friends with a flick of his finger. Harry kind of looks like the type of person to enjoy a good silence because he thinks it’s what he’s supposed to do.

Harry laughs with a honk again and it’s just as adorable as it was the last time. “I don’t. I  _ hated _ it. But it was good too, you know. Build my character and such. Like an  _ experience _ or whatever.”

“God, you’re one of those pretentious people, aren’t you? Have you ever had a kale salad?”

“Of course I have,” Harry scoffs, “What kind of a questions is that.”

“Did you like it?”

“Kale is absolutely disgusting in a salad,” Harry says and then continues with a whisper, “But don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Zayn laughs like he hasn’t in a long, long time. He feels it in his chest and his toes and at the back of neck, all happy and bubbling, like taking the train was the best thing he’s ever done.

“What do you do? Like, what’s your job?”

“Well,” Zayn settles down quick with that question. “What isn’t my job,” he starts, ominously as he always does when he goes through the list in his head. “I write freelance for this magazine sometimes, do some graphic work for it too if they need it. Some nights I help a friend in his restaurant, just, as a bartender or a waiter. I’m pretty good with tools,” he always feels a sense of pride because of it, “So I sort of volunteered to be my building’s handyman of sorts. It’s… I do bits and bobs here and there.”

“Oh.”

That’s all Harry says. Just an  _ oh _ that Zayn doesn’t know what to do with. So like always, he defends himself. “I just never found my calling. No like, one true passion. So.”

“No, no, it’s- That’s okay,” Harry has that soft look on his face again. It doesn’t feel as comforting as it did before. “I know not everyone gets to have their pianos and music.”

“So that’s your passion? Pianos and music?”

The way Harry says, “Yeah,” is all dreamy and breathy and like he’s half in love with it. Which he probably is. “It’s always been piano,” his fingers flex as he says it, “Now I’m trying the composing side of things.”

“And how is that going?” Zayn doesn’t know the first thing when it comes to classical music. Mozart, he knows who Mozart is, but more as a name than what his music is like.

“Sort of not the way I thought it would be.”

“You like it?”

Harry’s face twist into something sour as he says, “Yeah, sure. I like it.”

“Liar.”

“Hey,” he drawls out slowly. 

“You don’t like it.” Zayn even leans back on his hands, he’s that confident he’s right. “You don’t.”

“I  _ like _ it. I just love piano more.”

“Then quit,” Zayn shrugs. It’s one plus one. Or it should be.

“Can’t. Not in the middle of the semester.” He doesn’t sound exactly desperate, but it’s a close thing.

“Who cares. Just stop going then.”

“I’ll fail the year.”

“Doesn’t mean you’ll have to stop playing the piano though, does it?” Zayn says a little to quickly with an air of overconfidence and know-it-all-ness that’s never done him any good. 

When Harry says, “You look like the type who quits pretty fast,” the tables turn, because if Zayn has ever been anything, he’s a quitter. Always has been and always will be. He’s just wired that way. Doesn’t know why he’d stick around to be fired when he can pull the trigger first. 

So he shrugs unabashedly. “If it’s not working out, then I don’t see why I’d be sticking around for it.”

“You don’t always have a choice.”

“Of course you do,” Zayn says quickly. “You just find the first train out of Paris and you go.”

“To  _ Vienna.  _ Who goes to Vienna on a whim?”

Zayn smirks. “You’re looking at him.”

“I’m looking at a crazy person.”

“Maybe you are.” It’s not the first time someone’s called him that. Not even twenty-four hours since the last time. “But at least I’ve never done something I didn’t want to do. I went to college for three years before it dawned on me that I don’t even want to be a teacher.”

“A teacher?”

“English literature,” Zayn nods. “I dropped out a year ago.”

“And then what?” Harry bumps their knees together and finally leans back on his hands as well. His torso is  _ long _ . 

“And then I started watching tutorials on  _ Youtube  _ for photoshop, got into that for a while. I don’t know.” It doesn’t really feel like it happened two years ago. The memory of sitting in class half asleep on a Monday morning is still so fresh. “I’ve always liked writing, so I’m still doing that.”

“Doing bits and bobs is better though?”

“It is.” This is turning into the kinds of conversations he has with his mom, the kinds of conversations he hates. “I’m happy with where I am.”

“And that’s in Vienna.”

“Yes, Harry. That’s in Vienna at the moment,” he shakes his head at him. Harry should know where they are, since they’re there together. “The weather here is lovely,” he tries to say it with Harry’s accent, but it sounds all tight lipped and maybe more Australian than British. 

“Hey, don’t make fun.” Harry bumps the back of his hand against Zayn’s thigh and then they both settle down into a comfortable silence, basking in the sun with their faces toward it, while tourists bustle around them. It’s the first time Zayn even notices them.

“What are we doing after this?” Harry asks after no more than five minutes. He can do silence as good as Zayn does commitment.

“I don’t know, you’re the tour guide.”

“We could do lunch?” Harry contemplates. “You a veggie or anything?”

“Don’t eat pork,” he shrugs, but doesn’t open his eyes. “Other than that I’ll eat everything.”

“We could go to a friend’s cafe.”

“Only if he has the best food here. I want to experience this day the best I can,” Zayn says as he rights himself and opens his eyes finally. He could go for a nap, but there’s no time like today. Or something along those lines.

He’s still waiting for a response from Harry when he feels a hand on his knee and the press of fingers there. He turns his head from the people looking up at the cathedral to Harry, who’s looking at him, staring really, right at Zayn.

“What?” Apprehension crawls over the back of his neck with it, but when he follows the peek of Harry’s tongue as he wets his lips, it furls into something like curiosity and want.

“Can I kiss you?”

Zayn doesn’t mention Harry is leaning in even though he hasn’t said anything yet. “Is this one of your questions?”

“Might be.” Harry licks over his lips again, his eyes dropping down to Zayn’s before he focuses back on his eyes. He’s all wide, Zayn thinks. Wide eyes, wide nose, wide mouth. And pink lips.

Zayn forgets where he was going with the question when Harry is close enough that he feels his breath, and though he tries to come up with something to say, Zayn leans in instead and presses his lips tentatively against Harry’s.

They’re as soft as they’re pink, Zayn hums as he thinks of that. Plush, and parting against Zayn’s in a second kiss and then a third, an easy rhythm that’s just as lazy as it’s wonderful. 

It’s nothing where he could taste Harry, nothing that sparks behind his eyelids, but it still makes Zayn hum and sigh happily. He parts his lips just to hint at something more, and then pecks at the corner of Harry’s mouth.

They blink at each other and smile, a little dopily and a little shy, and then Zayn clears his throat and says, “My turn,” even if he doesn’t know what they were talking about anymore. He just knows that he likes Vienna more than he thought he would.

===

“I’m kind of lazy.”

“Um,” Harry looks up and then smiles when he says, “I’m really clumsy.”

“I’m stubborn,” Zayn says with an easy motion of his hand that’s supposed to show just how much he doesn’t care, even if the words  _ stop _ and  _ stubborn  _ in the same sentence pisses him off quicker than just about anything else.

Harry counters him with, “I’m flirty,” that he pairs with a wink over his shoulder. He saunters to a table in the corner and leers at Zayn before he sinks down into the chair and puts his bag down on the floor.

“That’s not a bad thing.” Harry, so far, has come up with flirty, scattered and clumsy, which contrast painfully against Zayn’s stubborn, lazy and flaky. He doesn’t know why Harry thought this game would be a good idea. Zayn votes for another round of twenty questions.

“Sit down,” Harry points to the chair opposite him and when Zayn does as he’s told he says, “Okay, you said stubborn, right? When you could’ve said, I don’t know, too determinate or something. That sounds sort of alright compared, doesn’t it? Or headstrong.”

“So…”

“So I said flirty,” another wink, “Where I could’ve said slag,” and then a shrug that isn’t hard to believe, unlike Zayn’s grasp for nonchalance. “It’s not like I go humping everything that moves, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’d rather say flirty than anything else. Makes me sound better, but it paints the picture, no?”

“Guess it does,” Zayn says slowly, wondering why someone who studies music pays so much care to their rhetoric. “I guess I have to change mine then. I’ll go with too determined, not always as motivated as I could be and… always late? Or, never on time? No wait, preoccupied.”

“See?” Harry gives him a big grin, all dimples and teeth. “But I still know what you’re actually saying.”

“Why can’t I just say what I mean though?” 

Harry lifts one shoulder then and pulls on his bottom lip. “It’s more fun this way?”

Zayn wonders if everything about Harry is always this endearing and cute. And if he always tries to make everything seem more fun than it actually is.

“What’re you doing here?” The guy that’s walking towards their table at the end of the row says. It makes Harry turn in his seat and smile blindingly at him, whoever he is. Zayn feels apprehensive, even if the guy is smiling right back at Harry, as if the unexpected visit is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

“Having lunch, of course.”

“Of course. Who’s this then?”

Since the nod was obviously pointed at him, Zayn stretches out his hand and says a polite, “I’m Zayn. Hi.” He gives him a smile too, though it’s nothing compared to either of theirs.

“Niall, this is my new friend. I picked him up on the train and then he kind of convinced me to give him a tour of sorts? And of course I didn’t know where to take him, but-”

“Hi Zayn,” Niall says loudly over the sound of Harry’s voice trailing off. “I’m Niall. Nice to meet you. What’re you drinking?” He pulls out a pad and then a pen from behind his ear. Zayn says an ice tea without thinking as his eyes follow Niall’s hand that lifts towards Harry’s head and disappears into his hair.

“Ice coffee?” Niall asks in a murmur.

Harry doesn’t do more than hum. His eyes are dripping closed. He looks like he’s about to… well. Zayn is suddenly uncomfortable.

“I’ll be right back.”

There’s a moment of Zayn blinking curiously at Harry, watching him come back to the cafe and the busy street just past their table, a park stretching from the other side of it, all trees and green grass and birds and people sitting on the benches along the pathway Zayn can see. It’s peaceful, probably the thing he’s going to remember when he thinks about Vienna in twenty or thirty years. The lunch he had with Harry in a cafe at the edge of the park. 

“They do great sandwiches.”

“Mmm?”

“Probably don’t have them in America. They have genuine Austrian sausages, but ours’ll be chicken, so, sort of an Austrian experience, I think?.”

“Definitely haven’t had that before,” Zayn says and brings his eyes back to Harry, who’s sitting straight in his chair, one leg hooked over his other knee and smiling at Zayn.

“Tell me about yourself Zayn. What’s your biggest secret?”

“My- my biggest secret?”

Harry starts nodding just when Niall comes back with their drinks. He puts them on the table and thankfully, keeps his hands to himself this time.

“So you two met on the train?”

There’s something in the way Niall stands that Zayn recognizes, but the signal of it gets confused by his incredible smile.

“Um, yeah.” Zayn doesn’t really want to go into the details of it - he’s sure Harry will fill him in tomorrow like he was about to five minutes ago. “I have a day to spare, so I asked Harry to keep me company.”

“Oh? How come?” Niall’s stance relaxes. He perches on one foot and taps the toes of the other behind the heel. 

Zayn skips his eyes to Harry before he says, “Waiting for a flight.”

Harry nods. “Yeah. And we’re terribly hungry. Starving, really. Could definitely go for two of my regulars.”

“I bet you could,” Niall agrees and then goes on to ask, “So what have you planned for today? A bit of museums? Cathedrals? Oh, take him to the Prater. And Under the Sky too. No, wait, show him your statute. Are you an artsy type?”

“Er.” Zayn scratches at the back of his head as he listens to Niall. “Artsy? Nah, more like, dabling a little with graphics and stuff?”

“Great, then you won’t like it at all. Take him,” Niall points his finger at Harry, smiles again at Zayn and walks away laughing with his head thrown back. Zayn is decisively confused while Harry looks absolutely giddy.

“You won’t like it,” Harry’s trying to catch the tip of his straw in the coffee with his tongue, “But I’ll take you. Or else Niall will be mad.”

“Sure, Niall, right.”

“He’s great isn’t he?” Harry sighs in the direction of where Niall is standing with his other customers now. It sounds dreamy, the sigh.

“Are you two- I mean, are you-?"

“No,  _ no _ . It’s  _ Niall, _ ” Harry laughs at the mere suggestion, as if Zayn knows anything about Niall. He barely knows anything about Harry. “No,” he says again and shivers. “He’s like a brother. A cousin, or like, a very dear friend of-”

“Okay, okay, I get it, I get it.”

“Told you I’ve made friends here. Niall’s one, then there’s Milly, she’s first violin,” Harry adds like Zayn knows what that means. “Louis, though he likes to pretend he doesn’t love me. Nick, who pretended he didn’t love Louis for a while, that was,” he waves his hand around, “a whole thing. There’s Matty, and Xavier, who is  _ very  _ French.” The way Harry snickers should tell Zayn something, he’s sure, but in the moment, he just looks at the happiness spilling from around Harry’s eyes and the corners of his lips, and Zayn doesn’t care about much else. 

“So you made yourself a little family here, huh?”

“Basically,” Harry looks down at the table as he sways his head from side to side, “Though the one back home isn’t half bad. Just, needed something new and all that.”

“I get that.” Not that Zayn would ever move away from New York. He has his own makeshift family there, besides the odd jobs, and his actual family is there too, all nineteen of them, distant and removed and married into it. “I’d miss my sisters too much though,” he sighs as he thinks about calling them tonight. Maybe just one, who’ll pass his hellos onto the rest. Probably Safaa.

“How many have you got?”

“Three. Doniya, Waliyha and Safaa. I’m second oldest, so I’m stuck in the middle a little bit.”

“I’m the baby, just one sister though. She’s gonna come visit soon.”

“Has she been here yet?” Zayn ranches for his ice tea and breathes happily when the droplets on the glass slide over his fingers. It’s a clear sky and though it’s only June, the sun is right on top of their heads and beating down the closer to noon they get.

“Not yet. She’s busy with her own stuff, you know.”

“This’ll be good practice then.” The mood has changed and Zayn doesn’t know why, but he’d rather Harry smiles and laughs and winks at him again than stare down at his coffee. “You’ll know what to show her and everything.”

Harry offers him something that resembles a smile at least. “Yeah.”

Zayn scrambles for something else to say, but he gets sidetracked by the fact he’s never worked to make Brent any less glazed over as he now realizes he had a tendency to always get around Zayn. Zayn gives everything a fair chance, a one good go at it, and then maybe, possibly, a half-assed second if it doesn’t exactly work the first time, but he doesn’t do it again after that. He isn’t willing to be an automotive continuation of doing something over and over again, so he won’t. Once, twice and then enough. Why he’s thinking of ways to make Harry laugh again and again, Zayn doesn’t know.

Before he can come up with a reasonable explanation that doesn’t make his stomach go all hot, Niall comes over and says one word in what Zayn guesses is German that makes Harry laugh with that honking sound and slap a hand over his mouth right after, slapping at Niall's thigh.

“That wasn’t very nice,” he chastisises halfheartedly, because he’s thanking Niall right afterward for their food.

“The best in town,” Niall tells Zayn. “Try it. Go on.”

“The, um,” Zayn picks it up, and eyes the ingredients spilling out at the side. “What’s in the…”

“It’s a chicken sauce with paprika and tomatoes.”

“Oh.” Zayn shrugs at the sandwich and then nearly chokes on his spit, because just like the straw, Harry actually pokes his tongue out to take a bite. It’s  _ obscene,  _ but since Niall doesn’t say a word, Zayn doesn’t either. He just blushes and takes a more conservative bite. He waits a beat before he mumbles out, “Not bad.”

“Not bad?” Niall scoffs. “Not bad,” he says again and walks off, so Zayn’s left to stare after him.

“Niall doesn’t like you anymore,” Harry tries to say around his mouthful. “You insulted his food.”

“I said it wasn’t bad!”

“Tell him it’s the best you’ve ever had when he comes back,” Harry says distractedly, chewing with his eyes on the sky.

They eat in relative silence, which really means that Zayn hums while Harry tells him about his school and his music and a lot of the things Zayn doesn’t really understand, like his conductor yelling at him in French one time, only to be shocked when he realized Harry understood that he called him a human giraffe. It’s funny to Harry, so Zayn laughs with him.

It’s one story after the other, of the people he’s met, and, “I like the history of Paris, a lot of music there, you know?” Everything Harry says, manages to sound all dreamy and airy. It might just sound like that to Zayn, but it doesn’t matter.

He sits there and wonders what Harry did to fill the silence at the beginning, when he didn’t have friends to talk to here. He seems like the type to sit down next to you on the subway and start talking your ear off, even if you’re a stranger, even if he’s never going to see you again. If Harry ever sat down next to him, Zayn would stay just to look at his dimples, he’s sure, because it’s not like that’s exactly what he did.

===

“This is is?”

“This is it.” Harry’s hair is flying around his ears with the way he’s nodding frantically and happily, waving his arms at the statue in front of them with the widest grin he’s given Zayn so far. He puts his sunglasses back into his hair and his eyes, as Zayn expects, are shining.

It’s a statue. A gold statue of someone with a big mustache playing the violin. Zayn doesn’t get it. “It’s a statue?”

“ _ Zayn _ . It’s  _ Strauss _ .”

“Sure,” Zayn drawls out. “I like the flowers?” They’re ornate and colorful and clash a little with the bright gold of  _ Strauss _ , but the entire sight is at least aesthetically pleasing if not of any immediate importance to Zayn. 

He gets a slap on his arms for it. “This is my favorite statue in Vienna,” Harry tells him primly and stands straighter next to Zayn, hitching his bag higher over his shoulder. “So you better say something nice about it soon or I’m leaving you here and going home.”

“I mean, as long as I can go with you,” Zayn starts and quickly trails off because of the look that Harry gives him. “It’s amazing. Look at it, pure gold and everything. Really, it’s quality, this statue. Definitely one of a kind.”

Harry grumbles something under his breath. “Fine. Whatever. It’s not like it’s here to commemorate a genius.”

“Okay,” Zayn tries, “Do I know any of his, I don’t know, songs? Is that what they’re called?”

“Actually,” Harry looks like he got exactly what he wanted, his eyes wide and bright and his smile stretching from ear to ear. “He mostly composed polkas and waltzes. Like,  _ Liebeslieder? _ ”

Zayn hums, half afraid of saying something wrong again. Not that he even knows what to say.

“I remember the first time I heard it, it’s just… Gentle and playful, and just.” He turns to Zayn and he looks like he wants him to hear the song right there in the park, standing in front of the statue. Harry looks like he can hear it himself. “It’s like something out of a fairytale, fit for a princess, you know? It just sounds-  _ God _ , the crescendo.”

“You should play it for me once.” If Zayn can make Harry look at him like that, he’ll listen to the crescendo, whatever it is. He wonders if the questions they have left can be used for kissing. Zayn would be all for that, especially right now.

“I should? I mean,” Harry shakes his head. “I will. Yeah. I will.”

“When did you start?” Zayn makes a vague motion to the statue. “With the classical music?”

“Since I was little,” Harry shrugs. “My mom plays the piano, so.”

“Oh, so you’re continuing the heritage?”

“No, she’s just a teacher on the side, like. But, I don’t know. She made me love it.”

“You do, huh?” Zayn says, and though Harry doesn’t give him a straight answer, it’s not hard to see how true it is. 

They end up sat on one of those benches, though deeper in the park, right next to a lake that isn’t quite big, but it isn’t small either. There’s a few people kneeling at the edge of the water with bags of old bread and a guy with a box of what looks like straight store bought oatmeal, which is weird, Zayn thinks, but the way all the birds flock to him makes it sort of wonderful too. A few of the ducks are out of the water, walking around the grass and though he’d never admit it, Zayn’s happy that they’re keeping their distance.

“I haven’t been here in a while,” Harry sighs deeply. Zayn wants to ask if he’s breathing in the air too or if he’s gotten used to it, living between more green than gray.

“How come?”

“Don’t know. I’m usually too busy.”

“Do you have a job besides college?”

“Hmm? Oh,” Harry chuckles, “Yeah, I work at a bar. Remember Nick?” He waits for Zayn to nod. “He’s the owner, but it’s the classes that take up a lot of my time.”

“You’re really good, huh? At piano?”

Zayn watches the blush spread over Harry’s cheeks in a lovely tinge of red. “I’m decent. Pretty good when I practice enough.”

“What’s the plan afterwards?” Zayn asks and as he sits sideways on the bench. He wants to touch his finger to Harry’s hand. He doesn’t really know what they’re doing or what they’re going to do, but he thinks he could be allowed to touch. Zayn tries it tentatively, pressing only one finger to the side of Harry’s pinky.

Before Harry gets around to answering, he’s tracing the lines over the front of Harry’s knuckles. 

“Maybe play for a philharmonic orchestra one day. In London, if I’m shooting for the stars,” Harry says looking at the lake and the people and the ducks. “I’d settle for playing here though. Like my mom, maybe, teaching kids or at a school or something.”

“Live forever in Vienna,” Zayn hums, because to him, it sounds like a fairytale. He’s never even considered living anywhere else but New York. If Zayn would shoot for the stars, he’s try to dunk near his home. But maybe he could get used to all the grass and the fresh air, or the musical history of Paris, the accent in London. A sandy beach in Spain maybe. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It doesn’t, does it?” Harry hums and turns his hand around, then makes a deeper, satisfied little sound when Zayn presses his fingers into his hand, right in the middle of his palm. Zayn doesn’t know anything about pressure points or hand massages, but he thinks it’d feel good if someone was doing it to him, grounding. Harry has long, thin fingers, Zayn imagines something like agile or flexible. Nimble. There are rings on three of his fingers, one plain, the other with a stone and then a rose. Zayn doesn’t know why, but it all looks very Vienna to him: clanky rings on the fingers of a pianist he met on the train he got on, but shouldn’t have. He’ll just have to color himself lucky he did. “What about you?” Harry goes on quietly, still humming as he does. “What’s your plan?”

“For afterwards?”

“Mmm.”

Zayn thinks one of the lines on Harry palm is the life line, then there’s something like a health line, maybe one for love. They all look the same to him, long and deep. He doesn’t know where to begin to understand what that means. 

“Maybe I’ll try to stick with one job for a while. Writing, I could do that.”

“You know,” Harry says slowly, dragging out his vowels as he smiles crookedly. “Writing in Vienna doesn’t sound that bad either.”

Zayn’s eyebrows drag up in a surprised confusion. “Don’t know enough German, do I?”

“I mean, not like you couldn’t write in English…”

“I guess I could,” Zayn concedes half heartedly, because this isn’t what he’d thought they would be doing today. Thinking about the after or any time other than right now. Zayn checks his watch. They have a little less than twenty hours left. “Do you ever think about going back home? To Manchester?”

Harry hums again, though it’s more to drag out time than to think. “I don’t t know.” Zayn’s pretty sure he does. “I like it here, don’t see a reason to leave.”

There’s something that makes him say, “You don’t have to.”

Harry gives him an ‘I want to believe you’ look and turns to face Zayn. “Give me your hands,” he’s wiggling his fingers up towards the sky and with only a little bit of doubt and concern, Zayn gives them over. “Here, like this.” He turns them over so Zayn could wiggle at the sky too, but Harry steadies him, keeps his fingers still. “Okay, now listen.”

“Wha-”

“Shh,” Harry whispers as he starts pressing on his fingers, one by one, then two, then three, in a rhythmic  _ tap tap tap  _ that’s quick, but settles into something more languid. “It wasn’t written for piano. There’s supposed to be violins, drums, flutes,” Harry’s listing off as he keeps on moving his hands over Zayn’s and there’s another  _ tap  _ when Zayn gets it. “But it sounds something like this.”

“I can’t,” Zayn starts, trying to feel it since he can’t hear it. “I don’t-”

“It’s playful,” Harry hums as he plays on, the rhythm slowing. “Lots of ups and downs, major key, so it sounds happy, but there’s this moment, like,” he stops, his fingers hovering in the air. “It starts quietly, sort of creeps up on you with the romance of it. I can’t play the way the violins do,” he starts moving his fingers again as he talks, “with their swoops, and the piano doesn’t do lightheartedness quite like a flute can, but I can do the ending crescendo. It’s a love story, but you don’t really know how it ends.”

“Like a cliffhanger?” Zayn asks tentatively, because he’s never heard this kind of music, with more instruments than a guitar and drums, but now he wants to.

“Exactly like one.”

“You should play it for me sometime,” Zayn says again and even if Harry is tapping away, so Zayn almost does hear it, he nods and says, “I will,” with that crookedly dimpled smile.

===

They watch a movie. It’s too bright outside for them to be able to see anything on the side of the building besides dark shapes moving around, and neither of them understand enough German to know what’s happening otherwise, but they lie on the grass and drink their beers and try to laugh every time everyone else does too.

Harry wants to take him to a few museums and though they get to one, stand in front of it for five minutes debating whether or not to actually go inside, they end up walking down the street and talking about how sometimes, they wish they’d be different people.

“Born in Paris,” Harry says and Zayn decides on, “New York, but Manhattan.”

“So rich?”

“Paris isn’t cheap either.”

Harry shrugs and Zayn laughs.

“A conductor,” Harry says in that dreamy way again, which Zayn’s sure is just the way Harry talks by this point.

“Why?”

“They have all the power. They keep the tempo, show the queues, pick the first chairs. They pick the pieces for the orchestra.”

“That’s the dream?”

“If I could play the piano and conduct at the same time, I would.”

“Maybe you will,” Zayn shrugs at Harry’s scoff.

“It doesn’t work like that.”

Conspiratorially, like it’s this big secret, Zayn whispers, “Then make it work.”

It’s a rush, making someone think they can do whatever they set their hearts on when you don’t even know what’s waiting for you back at home. Or it is and Zayn feels brave, until he says, “I have no idea,” when Harry asks him what  _ he _ would do if he could do anything.

“Don’t you want to write?”

“I don’t know.”

Almost pouting, Harry asks, “Doesn’t it feel like, a thrill to create, though?”

“Yeah, when you’re inspired and motivated it does. Otherwise,” his face screws up into something painfully twisted, which should be enough for Harry to understand how uninspired Zayn is most of the time. Writing short pieces on a blog a handful of people read to begin with doesn’t sound as exciting as one might think, especially if one is dropping out of college and it’s the only job one can get without a degree or twenty years of experience. 

Harry must understand, because he whines, “Oh come on, you’ve got to have some dedication,” all ignited and loud. “Where’s your sense of purpose and hard work? Aspiration?”

“Didn’t pack it with me, sorry.”

Harry slaps his arm. “Someone needs to light a fire under your ass, I swear.”

“Be my guest,” Zayn says and though he tries not to, he smirks right at Harry, who, surprisingly or maybe not really, smirks right back and even adds a wink.

After they’ve walked down another street and they’re waiting for the light to change, Harry says, “Pick one thing, write a show about something or a book or I don’t know, just pick one thing, and  _ do it _ .”

Easier said than done, Zayn almost grunts, but he lets Harry bump into him on the next step and as they come into view with the ferris wheel, Zayn lets his words seep into him instead of bouncing off in the next second.

===

“Besides the music,” Harry starts, but before he can finish his slow drawl, Zayn adds, “And the golden Strauss,” making fun of him only a little. Harry huffs, but the corner of his lips pulls up. “Besides the music,” Harry says again, “this is my favorite thing about Vienna.”

“A fair?”

It’s not dark yet, the sun dripping slowly down the sky as it hides behind buildings, but the lights are on. Little purple ones and blue, red, green and yellow, shining from booths, above the pathways between the rides, a big orange bulb lit up as someone’s just won a teddy bear for shooting down however many cans. Buzzing, they walk underneath the archway that says,  _ Prater _ . It feels like they walk into a fairytale - some place where there’s only happiness and a  _ ding  _ that goes off every other second, people yelling in German and Harry looking at him with the kind of smile that’s brighter than all of the lights combined.

“The Ferris Wheel.”

“The Ferris Wheel?” Zayn asks, not that he knows what they’re talking about, because Harry’s nodding and biting his lips, and it overrides all of Zayn’s capacity to form a single coherent thought that isn’t  _ let me kiss you again _ . So he takes a step closer to Harry and turns him so they’re facing each other, standing right underneath the string of pink fairy lights, and asks, “Can I kiss you?” even as they’re leaning towards each other until Harry’s sigh tickles his chin. 

Harry hums, or at least Zayn thinks he does, because as soon as he gets close enough to bump his nose against Harry’s, he doesn’t hear much more that his own thoughts, which centre around  _ lips _ and  _ pink _ and  _ yes _ . It’s as soft as it were before, except Harry cups his cheek this time, thumb pressing against the hinge of his jaw, so Zayn parts his lips until they’re both humming. It’s careful, how Harry kisses, like he’s testing the water before he dives in, because right before he leans away and grins like an idiot at Zayn, he licks at his bottom lip and bites it. No one sees, but Harry’s honking on a laugh as Zayn has to adjust himself before running after him to slap his arm.

“Idiot.”

“You should stay at my place,” Harry says, breezy and easy and faster than Zayn can follow. “Instead of like a hotel or something. Tonight. Stay at my place.”

Zayn stops him just to take a look, but he doesn’t know what he wants to see in Harry’s eyes other than the reflection of the rainbow all around them. So he says, “Yeah, okay,” and gets another smile in return.

===

“What is this?”

“Come on,” Harry’s pulling on his arm, dragging him inside, “we have to sit at that table.”

“Table?” Because it’s a room, a whole room, suspended on the ferris wheel, with tables and chairs and _ashtrays_ _and placemats_. “What the hell?”

“Isn’t it amazing?”

“It’s weird is what it is.”

They both sit down at the same table, pressed against the side of the living room on a ferris wheel and the view - the view is already something else. 

“What even is this?”

Harry shrugs. “Never asked anyone about it. I found it on my first day and, every once in a while, I take a ride.”

The doors close and then after five seconds of looking around and biting their lips, the wheel creaks to life with a smoother jump than Zayn was expecting. He thought it was going to make him sick, but that might just be the overload of red on red on red of the interior. In the end, Zayn either looks out the window, to the buildings Harry points out, and the park where they had lunch, or at Harry and the way he grins with his entire face. They watch the sun set, painting the sky in the kind of colors even New York has, and while there are three other couples spread around the makeshift living room, all Zayn sees is Harry. He’s too busy playing footsie under the table with him to see anything else anyway.

“So, where to next?” Zayn asks once they’ve done half of the circle. 

With something close to actual sparkles in his eyes, Harry grins. “You’ll see,” he says, and he’s so obviously trying to play it cool, that Zayn nearly topples the table between them trying to kiss his mouth. Coy is a look Harry does exceptionally well.

The table stays in its place in the end, and they manage to finally settle themselves and enjoy the view while it lasts, the sunset a watercolor of orange and pink. It’s a flash of a thought, like a pop of a dark blue in the corner of the sky, that Zayn hasn’t thought of Brent in the last however many hours. He hasn’t thought about how he just left, what Brent might be doing, if they might be missing each other. But Zayn doesn’t really have to think about that. 

There’s a feeling at the back of his neck, right at the nape even if he thinks it should be somewhere closer to his gut, that makes him pretty sure that the nine hour train ride and the months he spent in New York before, an ocean away from him, was the last he’ll have to think about him and the last he’ll miss him. It’d be stupidly romantic and more than a little pathetic if that was all down to Harry, but it’s him, just Zayn knowing he really doesn’t have to give it a good second try. That’s what settles it, and him, in the end.

It’s only a little bit the way Harry looks at him all happy and excited about their twenty-four hour adventure, but no one needs to know that.

“Ready?”

Harry gives him a wink.

===

“It’s small, but it’s mine, so…” Harry trails off as he pulls the doors towards himself and jimmies the key in what can’t be random jerks to the left and right. He kicks at the bottom of the door and then it’s open, unlocking smoothly, as if it doesn’t need a series of complicated and careful maneuvers to tempt it.

“So.” It is small, or cramped or barely big enough for Harry to stand in, but that’s the thing about attic apartments with ceilings that slope down with the roof. They don’t leave much wiggle room for long legs. The first thing from the front door is the kitchen, which is weird by itself, but then added by the fact Harry has about an inch of counter space to work on, it borders on absurd. “It’s okay,” Zayn feels the need to say when they’re through to the living room, which probably doubles as Harry’s bedroom as there’s an armchair next to the window and a bed tucked into a corner. At least there’s a nice curtain blocking it off. “I like it.”

“It’s what I can afford.” There’s really not much Zayn can say to that, because home for him is an apartment he shares with three other people he likes for twice as many days as he doesn’t. All that’s really his own is a bedroom that isn’t much bigger than the curtain marking off Harry’s from the living room.

So instead of saying something stupid that he wouldn’t even mean, Zayn turns towards Harry, smiles at him and says, “It’s very you.” It earns him a happy little grin.

“Thanks. I try,” Harry shrugs, fingers running along the back of the armchair, “Got all the flowers at the market.”

And now that he’s said it, Zayn actually notices the pots on the windows, the floors, the inch of counter that Harry has left occupied by a big leafy thing.

“That’s Patrick.”

“His name is-”

“He’s a  _ spathiphyllum _ , so.”

“So. You named him Patrick.” Zayn says like it’s obvious, because it might just be. He takes another look at the place, and without asking, he knows that in the beginning months of silence and no friends, of doing what he thought he was supposed to, the travel and the music, Harry found himself friends that didn’t talk much, but still managed to fill the space around him. Without really knowing Harry, at least not how he finds he wants to, Zayn thinks it’s a very Harry thing to do.

They’re both counting the plants for a moment or two, so when Harry says, “Do you- Would you like to shower? Or?” it throws them both off for the next five seconds. 

“Yes, actually,” Zayn says like a normal person, who hasn’t showered in more hours than he’d like to count, and doesn’t think about how he’s standing in what is essentially, a perfect stranger’s apartment in the middle of  _ Vienna _ like it’s also a normal thing normal people do. “Please.”

“It’s,” Harry points, but then must think better of it, and walks Zayn the three steps to the only other door in the apartment. “Here’s the light,” he switches it on.

“How do you shower in this thing?” The bathtub is small, and not like Harry’s apartment is small, but like an ant is small compared to an elephant, small. It’s tiny.

“You don’t?” Harry’s flushing a hot pink. “Have to sit down and do it like, slow.”

“Is taking a bath an option?”

“Could be.”

“Oh?” Now this sounds like something Zayn could be interested in, even if he seriously doubts they could both fit in together. Somehow though, they manage.

Harry chuckles and ducks his head and Zayn decides that this is the moment he’s going to have to be a little brave again. He gets closer to him, presses his fingers against Harry’s stomach and says, “Want to take a bath with me?”

“Preserving water, are you?”

Zayn pretends to think about it. “Mmm, not really,” he smiles at him, tips his head just that much so he can plant a kiss on Harry’s lips. It makes them both blush stupidly. It’s nothing to how red their chests are once they’re standing naked at the edge of it, though Zayn is flushed from laughter and Harry is panting from battling with his jeans, so it’s not as bad as it might look.

Harry opens the tap with a, “It needs some time to warm up,” and then he’s wrapping his arms around himself, a little shy and probably embarrassed all over again. But since that isn’t what Zayn wants, it’s the furthest thing he wants Harry to feel right now, he steps right next to him, sides pressed together and brushes his knuckles against Harry’s thigh as they watch the water turn to steam.

They let it fill about two inches and a half before stumbling their way in, wincing and hissing and, “Shit, this is hot.”

“I can let some cold water in?”

“No no, it feels good.”

Harry hums at him, closing his eyes once he’s sitting down, hugging his knees to his chest. Zayn has to do the same and even so, their toes are nearly touching. It’s cramped,  _ really very small _ , but Zayn can make it work. They can make it work.

“Can you straighten your legs?”

“If I squish you, yeah.”

“No– Without me here.” 

There’s a lufa Zayn’s eyeing, hanging on a hook next to the rack of soaps and shampoos, but he’s more interested in getting Harry’s hands on him than a plushy sponge.

“Um, maybe? I’d have to have them up a bit, I guess? On the edge?”

With a look that Zayn hopes says ‘give me a moment, I want to try something, don’t say anything’, he starts turning around. His ankles hurt against the porcelain of the tub as he maneuvers around, and he almost braces himself right on Harry’s dick, but he manages to turn in the end, back to Harry’s chest. With his hand is on Zayn’s arm, Harry pulling him closer so they're settled and as comfortable as they can be.

Which isn't all that comfortable, Zayn won’t lie, and he still doesn’t stretch his legs, because there’s nowhere to stretch them except through the wall, but lying a bit on top of Harry’s chest, his legs up on the edge of the tub to give Zayn more room, isn’t actually all that bad.

“Don’t think I’ve ever been in here with another person.”

“Good.” Without really giving it any thought, Zayn says, “Then you won’t forget this,” but since their time is still running out and Zayn is still leaving in the morning, he doesn’t have a reason not to say what he’s thinking. And that’s what it is, a little selfish and a lot happy that Harry might think of him every once in a while, taking a bath, brushing his teeth and looking over, remembering the weight of Zayn against his chest, he sighs and closes his eyes.

The way Harry says, “I won’t,” clear and quick, sounds almost like a promise.

They lie there long enough that they have to pour more hot water in at the end to even the temperature out, both going prunny already and not caring about it at all. 

Harry’s fingers have been pressing idle notes against his stomach and scratching against his scalp, pushing the short hairs away from Zayn’s forehead once in a while, and the calm settles around them just as Harry says, “I haven’t made it past Paris yet.” Zayn opens his eyes and tries not to move, letting Harry say whatever it is he’s saying. “Every time I decide to go home, I get on the train, but I haven’t been past Paris yet. I think I…” he trails off, pressing his mouth against the side of Zayn’s head, but there’s no rush. They can wait for Harry to gather the words. When he does, he says, “I think I’m afraid I’ll have to stay home once I get there,” quietly, practically in a whisper.

Zayn waits for a few seconds to see if there’s something else, before he breathes out and wraps his fingers around Harry’s wrists. “How long have you been here?”

“A year and a half.”

“That’s a long time to be away from your family.” Without even thinking about it, Zayn knows he wouldn’t be able to do it. He’d miss home too much.

“Feels longer than it is too. I just– I don’t know.”

“Who do you, like,” Zayn doesn’t know if he should ask, “Who do you think would make you stay?”

Harry shrugs, the water moving with it. “My mom. She didn’t want me to go in the first place.”

“Do you think she would though? Make you stay?”

Harry huffs out a heavy breath that Zayn can feel in his own chest too, and settles his head back against the bathtub. Zayn debates it for a second before he leans his head back against Harry’s shoulder and turns it to the side. He places a kiss underneath his jaw and keeps his lips there.

“She wouldn’t. She wants me to be happy, I know that, it’s just– I keep thinking how she didn’t want me to leave and now I can’t even go back. We talk, but I haven’t– I haven’t said how I can’t come home.”

“And your sister?”

“Keeps asking when she can come to visit and I keep saying I’m too busy.”

Though he hasn’t said anything, Harry took a day just to keep Zayn company, to show him around Vienna and ride the Ferris Wheel with him. Zayn can’t picture it, being too busy to see his sisters or avoiding his mom if he hasn’t done something wrong and he’s only doing it to avoid the lecture. Even then he usually lasts a couple of days before he gives into it and goes over for dinner with his head down and tail between his legs. Zayn didn’t even think about moving to Paris with Brent, but he can see that if he did, go to live over an entire ocean away from his family without their blessing, that coming back, it wouldn’t be an easy step to make. It would probably be easier than leaving them all over again though. Zayn can’t picture it, but he thinks he understands.

“If they both come for a visit, your mom and sister, they won’t make you go back, right?”

Harry sighs. “They wouldn’t no.”

“And you can show them the sights. I hear Vienna is beautiful this time of year.”

He sighs again, but he can hear Harry’s smile when he says, “There’s this Jazz festival in a few weeks. It’s pretty amazing.”

“That could be fun, you could show off your piano skills and everything.” With a bit of a laugh, Zayn adds, “You could introduce them to Patrick.”

“He is amazing.”

“Your best friend.”

“Hey,” Harry drawls, pinching Zayn’s side so he yelps. “I’m not a crazy plant person.”

Zayn’s laughing and saying, “Sure, of course you’re not,” and planting another kiss to his jaw. “But, if it’s Manchester that’s the problem, then have them come here, or meet them in Paris, you know? I know my mom would hate it if she couldn’t see me for a year and a half.”

“She does, but she gets it. She isn’t– I mean, she wouldn’t make me stay. She wouldn’t. I should just go home.”

“Hey,” Zayn makes sure to twist his neck around so he can look at Harry when he says, “Invite them over here. Take them to the jazz thing, show them where you live.” He doesn’t say ‘don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable’ and he doesn’t say ‘take it slow, one step at a time’ but it’s implied. Just like ‘they still love you, you know they do’ is. 

The turn they’ve taken has chilled the water down even more, so Zayn stretches to open the faucet again, just enough to get rid of the goose-bumps on his skin. 

“Thank you for today,” Harry says as soon as Zayn’s settled back against his chest. “It was good to walk around a bit. I usually just stick to going back and forth between here and classes.”

“Playing piano every day,” Zayn says, but finds Harry’s hand to squeeze his fingers tightly. “All day, every day.”

“Twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes. Poor me.”

“At least there’s the four minutes of boring sex.”

Harry squeezes his fingers back. “It’s amazing sex, actually.”

“You fall asleep in the middle of it.”

Harry hums back and wraps his arms around Zayn’s waist, tucking his chin over his shoulder. It’s sad, really, that Zayn can’t see the sight of it, Harry with his legs up on the tub, head back and eyes closed as he relaxes after a long day.

“Hey, Harry?” Zayn asks. Harry’s been breathing against his neck and each breath’s been deeper and longer. They still need to get to those four minutes.

“Yes?”

“Your dick’s pressed against my back.”

The silence is deadly for the next three seconds, Zayn knows because he counts, and then Harry laughs with that honk right into the top of Zayn’s head and wraps his arms around his middle, pulling him closer.

“I know.”

“It’s a pretty dick,” Zayn says around a laugh of his own. He’s not above complimenting a pretty dick when he sees one, and Harry’s  _ is _ pretty, a bit longer than his own probably, pinker at the head too. Thick.

“Um, thank you?”

Zayn wiggles his hips and waits for Harry to groan. “You’re welcome. Could you wash my back?”

Harry does. He grabs his purple lufa and squeezes enough soap onto it that it drips into the bath water and starts bubbling as they move around. Zayn turns once Harry is done and washes his shoulders, his chest, without asking, and then pressing his hands against his stomach, thumbs around Harry’s navel and a quiet, “Can I?” that Zayn is going to count as one of those twenty questions.

Harry nods before he tips his head back, and though Zayn wants to say he wanted to watch his face, he listens to the sounds Harry makes instead. The first touch to his cock, a thumb to the slit, earns him a hiss. Then there’s a groan when Zayn wraps his fingers around him and tugs and finally a little whine when he presses a knuckle right against his balls.

“I didn’t think–” Harry hisses again. “I didn’t think we’d do this.”

“Oh?” Zayn’s been thinking about it since they were standing at that traffic light right outside the station. 

“Not here, at least.”

“Where then?” Zayn asks with an interest as he tightens his grip on the upstroke, Harry’s hips lifting to follow his hand. They’re gonna be splashing water over the edge at this rate and Zayn doesn't much like the idea of cleaning up afterwards.

“Bed, the bedroom. On the bed.” Harry finally tips his head back down. He’s biting his lip. Zayn wants to do it too.

“Yeah, come on, we’re clean enough anyway.”

With Harry’s giggle and Zayn’s hands on his waist, they stumble only a little to Harry’s bed, tucked in the corner of the big-er room. Zayn falls down on his back and stretched his legs and arms out. It’s been a long day, walking here and there, keeping up with Harry, trying not to think about kissing him too often and too obviously. A busy day.

“I put this up last month.” With a stupid grin that somehow settles on Zayn’s face too, Harry pulls the curtain from one end of the bed until it’s all around it, like a little homemade canopy that doesn’t really hang from the ceiling of the four bed posts that aren’t there - just the frame-less mattress on the floor - but what has to be a shower-curtain-rod instead. Zayn doesn’t mention it, just makes grabby hands at Harry, because they should be closer and they should be kissing.

It’s really rather wonderful when Harry sets himself half on top of Zayn with a thigh pressed against his dick, and it’s actually lovely how now that they have time, or what’s left of it, Harry is especially slow and soft, pressing single kisses against Zayn’s lips and then dipping his tongue past them for just a touch. It’s all honey and sunshine, if Zayn would have to pick a word. Very ferris wheel and movies underneath the stars, playing piano against fingertips and mooning over Strauss.

And although Zayn appreciates a good thigh - and Harry’s are especially good - he’d rather do something else, something that’ll be just as soft and slow, but also do something about that impatient, too fast and urgent  _ thing _ that’s started to simmer in his gut.

So he palms at Harry’s shoulders and down his back, listening to him sigh right into his mouth and tasting each one, until he comes to the curve of his ass and then, well, fuck slow.

“Do you want to fuck me? You could fuck me,” he suggests, just whispers it against Harry’s chin and jaw, before he bites at his neck and shoulder to imply it’s not really just a fly-away suggestion. He hopes Harry understands that.

“I could,” Harry nods and stretches both his neck to the side and his hand right down to Zayn’s dick, his fingers against the tip. It’s as close to transcendence Zayn’s ever been. “Or I could suck you off. You could suck me off. We could suck each other off.” Slipping his hand lower so he’s palming at Zayn’s balls, Harry murmurs, “Could even do it at the same time,” like it’s just a simple idea, because Zayn has completely underestimated the coy little sparkly grin Harry’s been throwing around all day. 

“As long as I get to come, we can do whatever.”

“A quick, one-two wank then?”

“God,  _ Harry _ .” There’s a knuckle pressing right below his balls and there are something like stars in front of Zayn’s eyes. There’s a lot of things happening all at once and just because he can, he grabs more of Harry’s ass and pulls at the flesh a little, because even if it’s a lot, it’s not enough right now.

“Or, we could fuck each other. That could work.”

Zayn thinks he’s agreeing as Harry starts kissing down his chest, his hand back to pulling him off. It’s definitely not fucking and Zayn will definitely come before they could ever get to that, but it doesn’t feel any less good for it.

“I’d like to fuck you, though.” Harry’s eyebrow is raised in a kind of curious observation as he fingers at Zayn’s wet tip. “If we’re doing a vote.”

“Do you want me to beg?” Zayn’ll do it. At this point, he will.

“Not opposed to it, but I’ll do it without it too.”

“Then let’s go, one-two fuck me.”

“Impatient,” Harry hums and Zayn whines, “Hard and close to coming, actually.”

And then with an, “Oh,” Harry’s hand is gone and he’s hovering above him, “Why didn’t you say?”

“I thought playing with my dick kind of implied that.”

Harry smirks and then licks over his palm. Zayn tries to swallow his whimper, but his muscles tense, toes curling. “Sort of.”

“No, don’t, seriously, or I’m gonna come.”

“Can you do it twice?”

It’s hard to focus on talking when Harry’s trailing a wet finger down the middle of his chest. He presses his thumb against Zayn’s nipple, lets his thumb catch against the nub, and goes on like nothing happened and Zayn didn’t hiss.

“If I could,” he keeps his eyes on Harry’s hand, holding his breath as his fingers come to the trail of bristly hairs below his navel, waiting to see what Harry does next, “I would’ve already.”

And Harry actually pouts at that. “Alright.” But he doesn’t do anything. His hand is splayed against his stomach and while Zayn is looking up at him, a bit enthralled by Harry’s parted lips, Harry keeps his eyes on his fingers.

“Do you have like, lube or something?”

“Mhm.”

“Do you want to get it?” Zayn drawls out slowly, because something’s changed from one second to the next, and with a muscle twitch, Zayn feels it too. It’s taken them a while, but as they share a look, they both realize that after this, after they fall asleep, there’s only so much time left before Zayn leaves and Harry stays right here in this small apartment filled with plants. In Vienna.  _ God,  _ Zayn’s actually in Vienna. “Harry,” he starts, but doesn’t know what to say.  _ I’d stay if I could.  _ Or maybe  _ I’m happy we met. Thank you _ might also work.

Harry’s brows furrow for a second, eyes landing a harsh look someone between Zayn’s stomach and his dick, which would make him want to curl up any other time, but now it makes him reach out until his hand is at the back of Harry’s neck, so he can turn his head for him.

In the end, Zayn still doesn’t know what to say, so they kiss instead. Harry leans down and the breath in Zayn’s lungs whooshes out of him, lost somewhere between his lips and Harry’s. Now it feels like a rush, the way he bites at Harry’s lip and is half convinced he won’t let go until he absolutely has to. Harry whines and presses his hips against Zayn’s thigh, but only stays there for a moment before he’s rolling away and Zayn’s whining then.

Tucking his hand between the mattress and the wall, Harry rolls back with a bottle of lube and a condom, and then a quick, “On your stomach,” that has Zayn twisting on the bed in the least elegant way possible.

He’s just getting on his knees when there’s hand at the small of his back pushing him down, which really shouldn’t send the kind of flare down to his dick that it does, but Harry says, “No, stay like this,” and Zayn does as he’s told.

Harry presses himself right along Zayn’s side, and it’s either so he can mouth at Zayn’s neck or just to keep him from writhing too much while he slicks up his fingers and then barely even ghosts a touch between his cheeks. Whichever it is, Zayn has to tell himself not to come, that if he does, then Harry won’t fuck him and that’s something they both don’t want to happen.

Harry stays soft and slow while Zayn gets impatient and rushes him with, “Another, come on,” because realistically, they don’t have the time to go slow. Zayn would love nothing more than to take turns – stay on his front and let Harry open him up leisurely, enjoying how Harry draws it out and then get Harry on his knees himself, maybe eat him out just to see if he’d make the kind of pretty noises Zayn thinks he would. Without checking, Zayn knows they don’t have time for that. They won’t even be able to eat breakfast together in the morning, and out of the two, Zayn doesn’t know which he’ll regret not doing in twenty, thirty years. It’s probably going to be both.

“God, that’s–” Zayn’s legs spread wider as Harry presses three fingers against his rim and twists them inside slowly, like he’s being careful about it, because he probably is. He stops and kisses at the side of Zayn’s neck, giving him a second before he’s crooking them up, Zayn whining out, “So good,” as he does.

“Yeah? You ready?”

Zayn manages an incomprehensible gurgle of noise, but at least he nods his head, not that it actually makes Harry hurry up like he wants. He just pushes his fingers to the last knuckle and hooks them up, so that Zayn feels like he’s either melting or on actual fire. 

“I think you’re ready,” Harry muses with a trace of laughter in his voice.

“Harry, I swear to  _ god _ .”

“Yeah, okay, hold on.” With a final drag, he slips his hand away and from the crackle of plastic, Zayn hopes he’s putting on the damn condom so they can get a move on. He’s been ready to come for the last thirty minutes  _ at least _ . Harry or not, Zayn’s going to in the next ten. “Okay,” Harry says again as he braces his weight on Zayn’s hips, pushing him down into the mattress.

Zayn’s just about ready to start trashing on the bed when the weight shifts and there’s a pressure back at his rim and then, then he actually melts. Harry presses himself in slowly, and Zayn would think he’s doing it on purpose, but as he’s seen his dick, it’s just a precaution probably, like he’s taking it slow now so he can go however fast he wants to later.

It’s a lot to adjust to at first. Zayn has to breathe through it as Harry settles slowly inside until his hips are pressed right against his ass. Maybe it’s because it has actually been a while, boyfriend or not, and he’s more thankful than he can express in the moment that Harry gives him the time, all the time to get used to the stretch.

“You feel,” Zayn says and moves his hips left and right a little, not missing the way Harry hisses. Out of everything, Zayn settles for, “Good, you feel so good.”

“Yeah?” Tentatively, Harry pulls back and then swings his hips low as he presses back in and really, good is an incredible understatement, and as Zayn’s reserved to a high-pitched moan he tries to muffle by biting the pillow, he’s pretty sure Harry still understands it. Huffing out a breathy, “Yeah,” Harry at least shares that sentiment.

Zayn tries to angle his hips up as best as he can with Harry still pushing them down, but when Harry picks up his speed and settles on a rhythm that he could sing  _ I Will Survive _ to if only Zayn could catch his breath or open his mouth and not whine, all Zayn can do is whine, deep and more than a little crazed.

It’s probably embarrassing how close Zayn already is, but then he has been for so long he’s half surprised he’s lasted this long in the first place, but maybe that was Harry’s plan all along: get Zayn so close, he can just fuck him through it as he comes. An actual one-two fuck, though it lasts longer than that, Zayn will give himself credit, but only until Harry lowers himself down and practically lies across his back with his hips still moving, except now he’s biting at the back of his neck as well and panting at his skin and saying, “I’m gonna come, you’re gonna make me come,” as if Zayn’s ever told him that nothing gets him off faster.

“Yeah, come on,” Zayn says as he bites his lip and clenches around him because he wants to hear Harry come if he can’t see it. He wants to feel it too, but he’s not stupid enough to ask for that. Zayn raises his hips against Harry as much as he can and counts to one two three as Harry keeps up his rhythm before he’s pulling out and leaving Zayn empty. He wants to ask, but Harry’s groaning and then he feels the fist he has around himself, pulling himself off against the side of Zayn ass.

It’s like he’s read Zayn’s mind, because he can hear it, how Harry’s breath stutters right before he comes, hot and fast right over Zayn’s skin, just messy enough that Zayn wishes he could take a photo for after he leaves. 

“You look hot,” Harry pants and Zayn fucking whines, because Harry’s actually trailing his fingers over his own come, like he’s rubbing it into Zayn’s skin. If he had a little bit of friction anywhere close to his dick, he’d come.

“Harry,  _ please _ .”

“Yeah, come on, turn around.”

Harry gets him on his back and then all it really takes is one tight pull of his hand and his tongue pressed against the head of his dick to make Zayn come over Harry’s pink lips. It’s as obscene as it feels good, and it feels really fucking good.

Zayn’s still trying to catch his breath when the sheet is pulled from under him and a fresh one is being tucked over his chest and up to right underneath his nose.

He hums and opens an eye, turns to look over at Harry who’s propped up on his elbow and looking down at him.

“That was fun, right?”

It’s such a simple question, but paired with the earnest look on Harry’s face, the smile that’s a little crooked and leaning towards the left, makes Zayn laugh like he hasn’t in a while. He turns on his side so he can tuck his face into Harry’s chest and plant a loud kiss there.

“It was,” Zayn says once they’re both settled on their sides, looking at each other without a trace of shy coyness.

“We should sleep. Need to wake up early tomorrow,” Harry says as he leans in and kisses Zayn softly. With just a hint of tongue, Zayn can taste himself. They should really wash their teeth, probably take a quick shower sitting down, but they can’t be bothered. Not right now, so he wraps his arm around Harry’s waist and kisses him again before he closes his eyes. 

“We should yeah.”

“I set the alarm for seven.”

“Thank you,” Zayn murmurs.

Harry kisses his forehead in response and keeps his lips there as they both fall asleep.

===

They end up taking that shower in the morning.

After they almost throw Harry’s phone through the window when it starts ringing, Harry pulls Zayn out of bed and sets him off to the bathroom while he gets the coffee going. It’s cold when they get out, because Harry insists he’ll regret sitting on a plane for how many hours without at least a rinse and while they kiss and Zayn lets his hands wander, they don’t settle anywhere long enough to take it further.

It’s as Zayn’s rinsing their cups in the sink that Harry says, “I called you a taxi. Should be here in ten minutes.”

“Okay, yeah, thank you.”

“Do you need anything? Are you hungry?” Harry steps closer to him where Zayn’s planted at the sink still, the counter digging into the bottom of his spine. “I could make you a sandwich or something.”

Zayn smiles and looks down at where he has his fingers twisted. It’s probably what’s holding him together and making it so he doesn’t just burrow down into Harry’s floor where he’s standing just so he doesn’t have to leave yet. Zayn knows he has to, but he wishes he didn’t have to so soon.

“It didn’t feel like a day,” is what he says instead of ‘I’m not hungry’. It was just a day, just short of twenty-four hours and Zayn knows his face is doing a happy-fond thing when he looks up at Harry. He’s doing it too.

Being the brave one out of the two of them, it’s Harry who ends up saying, “I wish we had more than a day,” out loud. But once it’s out there, as a real, possible thing, it doesn’t sound as crazy as it would have just before they fell asleep last night.

It’s not often that it happens, hasn’t in longer than he remembers, but, looking at Harry and his wide eyes and wide nose and pink lips, seeing him smile and thinking of how happy he was in front of that Strauss statue, makes Zayn have an ‘I actually want this’ moment. He doesn’t remember having it in college or when he got hired at the magazine, didn’t come close to it when he was with Brent in New York or just two days ago, packing his bags and turning around to take one last look at him. 

“I know I don’t follow through with much,” he says as much to himself as he’s trying to explain to Harry. “I just give up,” he shrugs, “It’s usually easier that way, you know? But,” but  _ I actually want to see you again. _

“But?” Harry edges as he takes a step. Patrick’s sat on the windowsill between them now, watching them, waiting to see what they’ll do next.

Zayn doesn’t say  _ I want to stay here forever with you, _ because he doesn’t and he can’t. He has to go back to his jobs and his family and at least earn some money before he does anything rash if not stupid.

“But, I didn’t really see much of Paris when I was there.”

It takes a second of Harry frowning and still somehow managing to look cute before his face lights up. “I can give you a tour. I can– I’ve been to Paris, I know– I could show you.”

“Yeah?” Zayn takes a step this time and they’re basically close enough that if they were to fall, they’d fall right into each other, but not yet, Zayn doesn’t reach out yet.

“I have a project, I signed up to be in the orchestra for the summer,” Harry says, stumbling over his words as he tries to rush. He’s speaking faster than Zayn’s ever heard him. “Two months, it lasts two months.”

“I’d still think about you,” Zayn says as he finally allows himself to take Harry’s hand. “In twenty or thirty years, I’d think about where you are and what you’re doing. Where’s that Harry I met once in Vienna?” Zayn would probably want to cry, if he’s honest, thinking about this loose end flitting around Europe with his pianos and textbooks and statues.

“Have you been to Warsaw?” Harry’s come to stand right in front of him, pressing their chests together and running his hand through Zayn’s hair. Zayn shakes his head. “Chopin, when he died, he was buried in Paris, but he wanted to have his heart buried at home. We could,” Harry says quietly then, biting his lip. “We could go to Paris and then, maybe, to Warsaw. I’ve never been.”

“I always wanted to go to Poland.”

“I could play you come Chopin too.”

Zayn murmurs something that’s supposed to mean  _ I’d love that _ , but it’s lost against Harry’s lips. It sounds too good to be true, seeing each other again in Paris and then Poland, and then who knows, they could go to a different city every time – but most things usually do. So Zayn lets himself kiss Harry a little frantically, like he isn’t going to see him for two months and he’ll only be able to call him if he lets himself, which he just might, even if it will make him look all desperate and impatient. He will be, he already knows. 

“A chance meeting in Paris,” Harry mumbles against his lips before he kisses him again, like he can’t stop.

Between that one and the next three, Zayn manages to say, “I think I’ve filled my quota for chance meetings actually.”

“Then just meet me in Paris. No surprise strangers on trains or anything.”

There’s a honk blaring outside and they both know it’s Zayn’s taxi. He says, “Just Paris,” with a last kiss and look at Harry, tucking his hair back from his eyes.

“Just Paris,” Harry agrees, nods and takes a step back.

===

When Zayn is pocketing his passport and walking through security, he’s glad he kept the promise he made to Brent, but he’s already impatient about keeping the one he made to Harry.

_ Just you, me and Paris. _

===

The end. For now.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr.](http://www.itsallaboutzarry.tumblr.com)  
> 


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